"Let us hope so," rejoined Platoff. "Then, either they will reach Comrade Klostivitch or else it will be an end to R19. It depends largely on the temperature in the Baltic, eh?" Both men laughed softly. "Supposing," continued the Russian--"Supposing--and we must consider possibilities--this English officer takes the diamonds and then hands them over to the authorities?" "I'll have to take the risk of being convicted as a smuggler, comrade," replied Mindiggle. "But if they are subjected to a test?" "They will discover nothing. I defy the efforts of the world's laboratories to analyse the stuff," declared Mindiggle. "Acid, heat --nothing will avail." "Except cold," added Boris Platoff. "Then it will be what the ancient Egyptians call Nirvana," said the other grimly. Boris Platoff was a Leninist, a member of the ultra-extremist party in Russia. Having, under German influence, taken a prominent part in wrecking the Russian Empire as a fighting-machine, he was doing his best to supplant the Kerensky regime by one of red-hot anarchy. While on a mission to the Russian Anarchist colony in London he had been given an introduction to a member of the World's Workers--a revolutionary society the object of which was the social democracy of every nation under the sun. This member's name was simply given as Comrade Ivan, known outside the brotherhood as Mr. John Mindiggle. While posing both as an Englishman and a Russian, John Mindiggle was neither. He was a German--a Secret Service agent--whose work was entirely for the futherance of Kaiserism. During twenty years of practically continuous residence in Great Britain Ernst von Verbrennungsraum had been working unostentatiously, yet deliberately, for the Fatherland, for the day when Germany would become the mistress of the World and when freedom would be denied to all other nations large or small. Von Verbrennungsraum's chance came when Russia took the suicidal step of exchanging the yoke of Czardom for that of unbridled "liberty". The first revolution that resulted in the abdication of the Czar Nicholas was a step in the right direction so far as Germany was concerned, but it was not far enough. The new republic still maintained an army on its Austro-German frontier--an army in which bravery and cowardice existed cheek by jowl. Utter internal chaos was what was desired in order to remove a menace to Germany's eastern frontier and thus enable her to throw thousands of troops into other sectors of battle. To compass the downfall of the Kerensky regime the anarchists were to resort to a favourite device--explosives. In a secret laboratory was manipulated a new and extremely powerful chemical, which, in its final state, resembled, and could hardly be distinguished from, cut diamonds. It was a sample of this diabolical stuff that Mindiggle was in hopes of sending to Petrograd through the agency of Noel Fordyce.